Social Movements and the State in India Deepening Democracy [Hardcover]

Questions of the extent to which social movements are capable of deepening democracy in India lie at the heart of this book. In particular, the authors ask how such movements can enhance the political capacities of subaltern groups and thereby enable them to contest and challenge marginality, stigma, and exploitation. The work addresses these questions through detailed empirical analyses of contemporary fields of protest in Indian society  ranging from gender and caste to class and rights-based legislation. Drawing on the original research of a variety of emerging and established international scholars, the volume contributes to an engaged dialogue on the prospects for democratizing Indian democracy in a context where neoliberal reforms fuel a contradictory process of uneven development.   

1. Social Movements, State Formation and Democracy in India: An Introduction

Alf Gunvald Nilsen and Kenneth Bo Nielsen

 

2. The Slow-Motion Counterrevolution: Developmental Contradictions and the Emergence of Neoliberalism

Radhika Desai

 

3. The Politics of Caste and the Deepening of Indias Democracy: The Case of the Backward Caste Movement in Bihar  

Jeffrey Witsoe

 

4. Transnational Dalit Feminists in-between the Indian State, the UN and the Global Justice Movement

Eva-Maria Hardtmann

 

Manisha Desai

 

6. Women Workers, Collective Action and the Right to Work in Madhya Pradesh

Nandini Nal#t